With nationwide searches, police officers pushed forward investigations into hate speech on the Internet on Monday. “Hate and hate speech have no place in our society,” said the interior minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Roger Lewentz (SPD), on the operations that began in the morning. “We react with all clarity – in the real world and in the virtual one.”
The State Criminal Police Office of Rhineland-Palatinate was in charge of coordinating the nationwide operations. In which other federal states there were searches, it was not initially announced.
After hate speech following the killing of two police officers on January 31 in the Kusel district, Lewentz set up a “Hate Speech” investigation group at the Rhineland-Palatinate State Criminal Police Office. In the first three weeks after the crime, the investigative team led by the Koblenz public prosecutor’s office found more than 1,600 indications of hate and hate speech in connection with the crime on the Internet. According to the State Criminal Police Office, 509 of these cases were criminally relevant.
